On a team of clutch athletes, Phillies pitcher Ranger Suárez is unusually chill. Can we learn from him?

He’s described as having a “slow heartbeat,” unusually calm in the face of extremely high stakes, like, say, being asked to be ready to pitch as both a starter and a reliever in the World Series. No big deal.

“The poise is through the roof, nothing really bothers him,” confirmed Phillies manager Rob Thomson late Tuesday after Ranger Suárez nonchalantly pitched five scoreless innings to get his first World Series win. (He also memorably came on as a reliever in the eighth inning of Game 1.)

On a team of extremely clutch performers, Suárez has caught the attention of his teammates, coaches, and fans for his special brand of clutch: a certain calm and perspective, projecting a casual vibe where and when you’d least expect it.

At least if it were you out there.

“For athletes, or anybody performing in a pressure situation, it tends to raise your heart rate,” noted David Goldberg, a cardiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a mega-Phillies fan who had tickets for Tuesday’s game at which Suarez showed his signature low heart rate cool.

“It’s a sign of anxiety or nervousness,” Goldberg said. “Those that have the ability to control their heart rate in that environment tend to be able to perform better.”

In fact, Goldberg noted, musicians or other non-athletic performers sometimes will take a beta blocker before they play in public to physically lower their heart rate, and to guard against the sweaty palms and shaky knees or hands that might also come along for the ride.

“That tends to break the cycle, the fight or flight response,” Goldberg said, whose research focuses on children with single ventricle congenital heart disease. “There’s some feedback mechanism, when your rate starts to elevate, your anxiety starts to ratchet out. When you block that response, you block the onset of the anxiety.”

And then there’s Suárez, who drew comparisons to Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee when he took his time fielding a grounder and throwing to first in the eighth inning of the first game of the World Series. “Honestly, the only difference is that it’s the World Series. Like the name is different,” Suárez said after.

» READ MORE: Cool as Cliff Lee: Ranger Suárez delivers for Phillies in his own iconic World Series moment

The Phillies have proven themselves to be massively clutch performers this post-season, Bryce Harper with his immortal home run against the Padres to send the Phillies to the World Series, setting off a debate over whether he was clutch or just simply great, book ended by another legendary home run off the first pitch to him Tuesday night at Citizens Bank Park, Nick Castellanos and his three impossible diving catches in right field, pretty much the entire team rising to the post-season occasion beginning with the six-run top of the ninth against St. Louis in the wildcard round.

But if the velocity-driven celebrations of Bryce Harper or the wet-haired joy of Brandon Marsh might cause you to bow down in appreciation, there’s something more relatable about Suárez’s brand of calm: playing hacky sack with a baseball in his off time, focusing in on the things he can control, not the extra distractions, trying to have fun, defining his mission in very specific terms.

“I like to throw pitches in the strike zone,” is how he described his job in an interview with Matt Gelb of The Athletic in July 2021.

From a sports psychology perspective, there’s a lot to learn from Suárez.

Liz Nobis, the first mental health professional hired by Penn Athletics, said people have their individual starting points in terms of feeling and managing stress.

“It can definitely be a taught skill, things such as visualization or relaxation or concentration,” she said. “The ability to develop confidence in the face of extreme pressure, things such as feeling in control of the outcome, emotion regulation.”

Nobis focuses on helping the athletes manage their stress inside and outside athletics. Pressure can be toxic for athletes, and there have been some high-profile athletes, like Olympians Simone Biles, who withdrew from the all-around finals in Tokyo to care for her mental health, and skier Micaela Shiffrin, who have been transparent about the toll of stress and performance anxiety.

People have the ability to “build capacity,” in stressful situations,” Nobis said. “You need the right amount of gradual intensity to then build confidence, and then feel you an overcome those challenges.”

Whether Suárez or the other Phillies have heart rates that are literally slow (endurance athletes are known to have a certain level of bradycardia), Suárez seems to interpret what he’s feeling as excitement or anticipation, not anxiety, a key goal of sports psychology.

“I spent so much of my time working with athletes, and we have a lot of techniques to help them so they get to that point,” said Joe Dowling, a Manayunk-based sports psychologist who has worked with the pro teams in Philly and currently works with Penn men’s and women’s basketball teams. “Then there are people like Suárez where it just seems to be in their DNA.”

Suárez seems to be one of those people, Dowling says, who is able to “be present and in the moment.”

“I think that’s just the way he is,” said Dowling, the author of Zonefulness. “There’s the whole idea of a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. He has a growth mindset. He looks at challenges as an opportunity.

“I think most of us unfortunately, even the best of us, intuitively we’re self-critical,” Dowling said.

Dowling does “zone exercises,” where athletes close their eyes, take deep breaths, and practice being in the moment.

“Ultimately, it’s trust yourself, and be present in the moment,” Dowling said. “What they could learn from Ranger is something I talk about a lot, being willing to make mistakes. When you’re willing to make mistakes, you’re willing to make good plays.”

Just stepping onto any big stage like that, be it the World Series or even a major political debate, requires courage, agrees Joel Fish, a Philly-based sports psychologist who has worked for 25 years with all the major Philadelphia sports teams and is the director of the Center for Sports Psychology.

“People who stand a better chance of performing not only embrace the moment, love the competition, but they have less fear of failure,” he said. “It’s the courage to put yourself in a situation where you can’t script the outcome. It’s one of the things I admire most about elite performers.”

Some people just have that temperament where they’re calmer in pressure situations, said Fish. “I had an athlete tell me, ‘I pride myself in being the calm in the midst of the storm.’ That doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed anything.”

One NBA player told him, “Nobody can get in my gut and force my blood pressure up.”

Focusing in and narrowing the task at hand is also key. “One football player told me, the bigger the game the narrower the focus,” Fish said. “Clutch performers can narrow the focus and keep it simple, control what they can.”

With Suárez, he said, “He’s had those personality traits since he was singled out as a 16-year-old in Venezuela.”

The Phillies have shown in their psychological approach qualities that everyone can aspire to, even without taking into account their massively successful outcome, these professionals say. .

“Truly anybody who’s pitching in the World Series in front of 46,000 people who can still throw a strike has their performance anxiety under control,” Goldberg said.

Those traits could make the difference. “They have a certain intangible, a certain energy and belief that comes around only so often,” said Fish. “That could carry them all the way.”